Open Days

Open Days is the main outreach program of the nonprofit the Garden Conservancy, whose mission is “to preserve, share, and celebrate America's gardens and diverse gardening traditions for the education and inspiration of the public.” Each year it invites the public to participate in that mission by organizing private and public garden visits on special days called “Open Days.”

During Open Days, garden visitors are treated to the opportunity to experience many gardens that are rarely open to the public. Pop-up nurseries, talks, and workshops by garden experts and designers are often organized in conjunction.

Open Days Directory

This annual 300+ page soft-cover book served as Open Days’ main promotional product. It was also used as a membership perk of the Garden Conservancy. 

I designed the Open Days Directory from 2006 to 2017, evolving and strengthening the brand expression and making the content more user friendly with each edition. The 2016 book was a major redesign using a new set of typefaces with a more clean and cheerful feel and that saved on ink. Also new were overview maps, more color photographs, and iconography.

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Open Days promotional booklet

The Open Days Program booklet was a pre-book-release promotional piece that highlighted the upcoming year's events and also reminded the public of the Garden Conservancy’s core mission.

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Open Days Season Intro and Open Days Directory Book Promotion

To further promote the upcoming garden-visiting season and to sell the Open Days Directory, I designed direct mail pieces, emails and ads, and administered webpages. I created the branding language, graphic assets, and curated and color corrected all photos.

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Open Days Digging Deeper Events Promotion

Open Days In-Season Events Promotion

When gardening season is in full swing Open Days hosts multiple events across multiple states every weekend. I was responsible for the event promotion schedule and emails (segmented by regions or states and consumer interest), print and digital ads, posters and postcards, flyers, and street banners.

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Open Days Volunteer Recruitment

Open Days relies on its vast network of gardener volunteers and are always seeking out new connections. I designed online content including downloadable information to explain how people could get involved and forms to submit their interest.

The majority of Open Days volunteers (and garden visitors) during my tenure preferred print and old-school communication so having information available online AND in print was very important. Surveys were conducted to track the evolution of this preference.

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Open Days Volunteer and Garden Visitor Badges

The Open Days Program supplies garden owners who have volunteered to share their garden with the public with all the materials needed to participate in their garden tours. These materials are packaged into ‘Host Kits’ and include directional signs to post on the street, signs to posts in their garden, admissions table signs, admission tickets to sell, garden visitor registers, badges, etc. which I designed. I also designed some street and pop-up banners for larger signature gardens.

These are Open Days badges/buttons to be worn by the garden host, volunteers, and Digging Deeper guests. Young garden visitors got a Garden Sprout sticker.

Open Days and Garden Conservancy Logo Refresh

You may have noticed that older Garden Conservancy and Open Days materials feature slightly different logos (the ones shown on the left).

GC asked me to “improve the health” (and mood) of the sun in both the Open Days logo (shown at the top) and the Garden Conservancy logo (shown on the bottom) without “changing anything.”

I think the newer versions are much more cheerful and welcoming!